


Suddenly (I see)

by WanderingBandurria



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: But it helps, Feelings Realization, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Friends With Benefits, Gen, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, On-Again/Off-Again Relationship, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Traveling, love doesn't solve it all, quarter life crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25222627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WanderingBandurria/pseuds/WanderingBandurria
Summary: Seamus is 26 and feeling at a loss about where his life should go.
Relationships: Seamus Finnigan/Dean Thomas
Comments: 13
Kudos: 46





	Suddenly (I see)

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So this is my first time writing this ship (I'm usually in the Wolfstar corner if you want to find me), but these boys have been occupying my thoughts lately, so I decided to give it a go! Hope you guys like it, it's very sweet and soft, and I have a lot of feelings now.
> 
> I have a lot to thank to [SwottyPotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swottypotter/works) for the encouragement and helping with the first read (thank you love!), and to my lovely, lovely beta LikeABellThroughTheNight for helping me with all the details and always being patient with me!
> 
> So, English is not my first language, so if you spot any mistake, they are my full responsibility, but please let me know! I love learning, and improving my English is one of my main reasons to write. Since I'm not a native speaker and I've never been to Ireland, I decided to write Seamus' without the Irish slang, hope that's okay. Send me a comment if it feels too weird :) 
> 
> Okay, hope you enjoy this!!
> 
> Oh, the title is inspired by KC Tunstall's song!

\---

Twenty-six and still searching for his place in the world doesn’t sound good, Seamus knows. 

He should be in a stable relationship, following a plan for his career, subletting an apartment and drowning in debt.

He should be on the path of re-building a life after a war that was over more than five years ago.

Instead, he collects postcards and letters from his friends from school - Neville, Harry, Hermione… Dean. 

Instead, every few months, he finds himself hating everything he's doing and moving to a new city. Thank Merlin for magic and magical communities that are still fairly used to wanderers, melancholic spirits that roam through the world without much money or purpose.

Instead, he still gets the biggest satisfaction from mindless jobs that involve burning, scrapping, or destroying things. His mum had told him, months ago, that he needs to find something to do where his magic can make a difference, where his talents are put to good use. But what talents, he had asked her, the ink splotching the paper and burning holes where his magic lost control. He got back a fatass letter that he burned without reading.

He doesn't burn the letters where Dean asks him to come back, maybe for Christmas, or at least for New Year, or what about the yearly celebration of the end of the war, or Hermione's celebration of her meteoric rise at the Ministry - he's just a Portkey away, he knows, and Dean has offered to come pick him up, if only Seamus would tell him where he is. Seamus knows that there are a few spells that would let Dean find him in any corner of the world, but he also knows that Dean would never use them unless Seamus gave his permission.

Twenty-six and without purpose, except getting through one more day, paying for his hostel one more night, having a warm meal in his belly, and maybe tomorrow having a warm body in his bed. Twenty-six, and still disheartened by a war that turned his life around, that made him a war hero, but also stole his best friend for a year, and with that, all the possibilities of figuring out his feelings for him at the right time; a war that, instead, made Seamus snog him like crazy in the few days after the end of the war, hearing Dean moan his name with his hand shoved into his pants before funerals started and things became too real and Seamus had to run away.

Twenty-six and at a loss, wishing to be sixteen again, to do everything over, to have told Dean that he fell in love with him on the night of the Quidditch cup when they were in front of the fire in the common room a few weeks before Dean got together with Ginny, when Dean looked at him with his soft, laughing eyes that were suddenly sad, and told him that well, as things were, he had been thinking of asking Ginny out.

And now he's twenty-six, and he flirts - if one can call words on parchment that - with Dean in his letters, refuses to ask him about his love life, or mention his feelings and how he can't stop thinking of him even though he has met fantastic people that make his insides quiver.

Twenty-six and in a pub in Boston, hating every young person around him doesn't sound good, does it? Twenty-six and paralyzed with the desire to find his path, knowing that _it isn't this,_ but also feeling incapable of changing anything to try to find another way, sounds so pathetic and un-Seamus-y - he used to be so energetic, and he fought a war so that everyone could live the life they wanted; so _he_ could keep living and having fun and searching for new ways to bring chaos into the world…

And suddenly he sees it, and it's so stupid to have a realization like this in an Irish Bar in the USA, with his shirt soaked in sweat and cold air hitting his back every time someone opens the door - with his lips tingling with the whiskey and anger boiling in his stomach as he overhears a stupid conversation being held by stupid wizards defending the need to _preserve the heritage in America_.

_He wants to go back home_ , he realizes, even when he's not sure where _home_ is. He's tired of this - this numbness, of this _waiting_ for something to happen. He pushes the empty glass towards the bartender and stands up, resolutely. Before he can think what he’s doing, he's out of the pub, his cheeks getting mercilessly hit by the cold wind.

Not even three hours later, when it's well past one in the morning, he's outside of a green door in a Muggle building where he has never been before, knocking loudly and without pause. He's not sure how he managed to convince the Portkey officer to let him jump to England when he was still a bit drunk - well, not straight to England, there's no Portkey that can do that, but following the Portkey route through secret islands, taking garbage-looking-Portkeys after garbage-looking Portkeys until he arrived here, to this green door where home is, or _may_ be. 

Dean opens the door, bleary-eyed, confused, yeah, but not surprised. He smiles softly and pulls Seamus in before he can utter the words that he has been practising for the last few hours.

"Hey," Dean says with that soft smile of his, that hasn't changed since he met him in first year, even though now there are soft expression lines around his eyes. "Welcome back," he adds casually, and Seamus forgets everything he meant to say.

"I don't want to learn to cook," he blurts, idiotically, before he can make any sense of what he was about to say, but he pushes forward, walking confidently into the apartment that is so clearly _Dean's_ , even when he has never been here before. He lets himself fall into the tattered couch and sighs, content and tired. 

Dean sits down beside him, nodding, that soft smile still in his lips.

"But I can make a mean home-made Lager. Learnt last year, even created my own charm so that it would make you remember the last good time you had while drinkin’," he adds for context.

"Okay," is all that Dean says, and Seamus lets his eyes roam the living room, quickly spotting a few of Dean's art pieces hanging from the walls, including a drawing on the coffee table that was clearly ripped off a sketchbook. He watches himself laughing, frozen on the paper, and remembers Dean making it when he last visited - he was waking up on Dean's bed when he saw Dean stumbling over their clothes and dropping the breakfast on the floor. Instead of cleaning up or getting angry, Dean just looked at his laughing face, and breathing heavily, bolted towards his work table to retrieve a sketchbook, kneeled in front of him, kissed him long and purposefully, and started drawing him, not minding Seamus's complaints about breakfast.

When was that, two, three years ago?

"I don't care about cleaning or doing the laundry either," he adds, after a beat, nodding approvingly to himself, and receiving the equivalent gesture from Dean, although in Dean’s case it’s fueled by mockery, and he seems to be on the verge of laughing and reminding Seamus how he kept his things back at Hogwarts, but he doesn't say anything. Sweet old Dean, always indulging him.

"And I don't want to go to any public commemoration or anythin’ held by the Ministry. I don't care if Hermione herself is the Minister. But I do want to visit the graves and meet with _everyone_."

Dean nods, a solemn expression in his face. Seamus remembers feeling worried about being too late, about not having a space in Dean's life anymore, but that sounds very stupid in his head now. Not because he can take Dean for granted, but because he realizes that Dean has been having his own process, and they are the same, and they are not, but there’s still a Dean-and-Seamus’ opening in both their lives.

"I want to keep living," he says resolutely, and he knows he sounds stubborn and idiotic, and with anyone but Dean, he would be afraid to utter the words. "I'm done with this purgatory, with this half-life. I won't be a war hero, nor a widower of the past. And I want you with me in this new life, but I know I've been away for years and you might have your own things going on," and weirdly, he feels calm with that idea - with Dean having his own life, having had his life for all these years, and being happy without him. Maybe building something for himself of which Seamus knows nothing about.

"I do," says Dean, taking his time to think. "I haven't paused my life waiting for you. But I've been waiting, nonetheless," he adds, and Seamus feels his heartbeat picking up, even when Dean doesn’t move, even when he’s still watching him from some distance, keeping the same position since they sat on the couch, with his arm thrown on the back of it, with his body facing him.

Seamus nods to himself, trying to figure out what else to say, when he feels Dean's fingers on the back of his neck.

"Can I kiss you now?" Dean asks, and now it’s clear that he's holding in his laughter, even when the moment feels sacred and loaded. And fuck knows, but things can be like this, _have always been like this for them_ , Seamus thinks, sacred and foolish at the same time, light and heavy, loaded and clear like water.

He smirks, and turning on the couch, grabs Dean's neck and pushes their mouths together forcefully, like he did when they first kissed, all those years back. Dean laughs against his lips, all lightness and calmness, and pulls him closer, almost on top of him, and opens for Seamus - his lips, mostly, but also so much more; his life, his heart, his future.

Seamus is breathless and giddy with the exhaustion of years of running, but also with desire - for this man, for their life together, for claiming his own life back - when he remembers an important part of his realization. He pulls back, and he feels his heart jumping under his ribs at Dean's soft eyes.

"I want to open a B&B," he says, and it's a testament of how much Dean loves him that he doesn't laugh, but seems to understand exactly what he means, "well, it's not a Bed and Breakfast, properly, but, um, a place to stay and be happy and deal with the _shite_ in the world - for, for young people, and fuck it, not-so-young people, to be themselves and explode and figure things, if they need to," he can feel the energy going through his veins, the excitement of telling a secret to Dean, the thrill of starting something new, that he _wants_ to do, that he wants to try.

Dean hums.

"So, a pub," he says, and when Seamus pushes him off the couch, they are both laughing. Seamus snorts and lets himself fall to the floor too, where Dean is waiting for him with open arms. He nuzzles closer, realizing that he'll fall asleep in no time, right here, on the floor.

"Yeah, a fucking pub, Thomas. I knew you would know what I meant," he mumbles against Dean's neck. Dean nods and squeezes him.

"I do always understand, don't I?" And as Seamus is losing himself to sleep, he can feel Dean's cheek against his head, and a soft kiss left there. "Good thing you always do, too."

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please hit me with a comment/kudos if you liked this!
> 
> You can find me on [Tumblr](https://wanderingbandurria.tumblr.com/) if you want to chat, I love meeting people from around the world!
> 
> Ah, and of course, this was inspired in a lot of beautiful works about the guys, but the HC of Seamus travelling and deciding to work with people comes from A Root So Deep by wook77, so go read it if you haven't!


End file.
